Multiple international news outlets have featured the installation and interviews with Professor Bilal including CNN, BBC, and CBC. Additionally, the project's Kickstarter surpassed its funding goal almost 7 times over.
During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the College of Fine Arts at the University of Baghdad lost their entire library from looters who set fire to the collection. Over 70,000 books were reduced to ashes. To this day, students still have few books from which to study.
168:01 is an installation by Wafaa Bilal, a University of Baghdad alum and full time faculty member in the NYU Tisch Department of Photography and Imaging. The installation features a library of 1,000 blank white books and stands as an austere monument of loss that simultaneously activates a potential for rebirth. Each book in the white library is embedded with the possibility of rebuilding anew from the ashes of cultural decimation.
168:01 is on view at the Art Gallery of Windsor in Ontario, Canada until April 10, 2016. For more info, visit the official page.